Excerpt from Making Movies
Sidney Lumet:
So how independent am I? Like all bosses and on set, I’m the boss I’m the boss only up to a point. And to me that’s what’s so exciting. I’m in charge of a community that I need desperately and that needs me just as badly. That’s where the joy lies, in the shared experience. Anyone in that community can help me or hurt me. For this reason, it’s vital to have the best creative people in each department. People who can challenge you to work at your best, not in hostility but in a search for the truth. Sure, I can pull rank if a disagreement becomes unresolvable, but that’s only as a last resort. It’s also a great relief. But the joy is in the give-and-take. The joy is in talking to Tony Walton, the production designer on Prince of the City, about the theme of the movie and then seeing him come up with his expression of that theme.
Hiring sycophants and servants is selling the picture and myself short.
Yes, Al Pacino challenges you. But only to make you more honest, to make you probe deeper. You’re a better director for having worked with him.
Henry Fonda didn’t know how to fake anything, so he became a barometer of truth against which to measure yourself and others.
Boris Kaufman, the great black-and-white cinematographer, with whom I did eight movies, would writhe in agony and argue if he felt a camera movement was arbitrary and unmotivated.
God knows, I’m not arguing for a contentious set. There are directors who think they have to provoke people to get the best work out of them. I think this is madness. Tension never helps anything. Any athlete will tell you that tension is a sure way of hurting yourself. I feel the same way about emotions. I try to create a very loose set, filled with jokes and concentration. It sounds surprising, but the two things go together nicely. It’s obvious that good talents have wills of their own and these must be respected and encouraged. Part of my job is to get everybody functioning at his best.
